GamesRadar - Xbox 360 Reviews

Dragon Age: Origins (Review)

Nov 3, 2009

Dwarves. We already know what dwarves are. Dwarves are short, but strong. They make for good warriors and live underground. We already know all about dwarves, elves, mages, and dragons. So we thought we already knew all about everything Dragon Age: Origins could possibly throw at us while browsing through the unsurprisingly wide selection of beards for our upcoming dwarf warrior in the character creator. ...

Tornado Outbreak (Review)

Nov 2, 2009

Wow, this is a strange one. Tornado Outbreak is a completely new IP from Konami – home of Silent Hill and MGS – but it looks and feels like a Saturday morning cartoon tie-in. It’s hard to believe that this saccharine sweet title was once thought to be MGS creator, Hideo Kojima’s next project after Guns of the Patriots. ...

SAW (Review)

Oct 28, 2009

SAW is a happy game with bunnies and flowers and cakes. Arch villain Jigsaw’s had a change of heart and is dishing out presents because… no, not really. It’s bloody miserable. It’s also hugely dark, crudely animated, has ropey combat, and the scenarios – despite getting more and more gruesome as the game goes on – start to drag after a few hours. Not much to like then? ...

Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City (Review)

Oct 28, 2009

It’s strange to think that, as of this writing, Grand Theft Auto IV is more than a year and a half old. It’s even stranger to think that the story it began is finally complete, with the two downloadable episodes – The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony – filling in plot holes and offering up inventive new ways to explore the city that most GTA fans probably thought they’d exhausted of possibilities by ...

Fairytale Fights (Review)

Oct 28, 2009

There’s one good thing about Fairytale Fights – the combat doesn’t suck. Well, not immediately anyway. Sadly, everything else that surrounds this average hack and slash gameplay pretty much does. The story, the platform bits, right down to the character design – which reminds us of the annoying Rabbids – all of it makes for a huge drag. The worst bit? It costs as much as a top-brand game. ...

Tekken 6 (Review)

Oct 27, 2009

Balance is a delicate thing, so easily lost. Tekken is a series that thrives on it – on striking a balance between fulfilling its remit as the ‘accessible’ 3D fighting game (button-mashing will get you further here than in most fighters) and offering a system substantial and even enough to allow the hardcore fans to battle at a competitive level. ...

DJ Hero (Review)

Oct 27, 2009

DJ Hero is a game that really needs to be played to be truly appreciated. On paper it seems to be yet another ill-conceived concept bundled with a money-spinning peripheral to give it a novelty value – the kind of thing you fiddle with at Christmas and chuck into the spare room for the rest of the year. But when you actually place your fingers on the turntable and scratch out your first mix, you’ll lose all those nagging doubts or cynical thoughts, and – toilet breaks notwithstanding – you won’t stop until you’re wrestling with the wrist-snapping final tunes of the game. ...

Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 (Review)

Oct 26, 2009

For years now, EA has strived to bring FIFA up to the same standard as PES, often mimicking Konami’s masterpiece or (ahem) ‘borrowing’ gameplay elements in the process. PES, meanwhile, has procrastinated, barely changing for each iteration until – finally – it finds the boot’s on the other foot; FIFA’s the champ and Konami is looking to EA for inspiration. ...

Borderlands (Review)

Oct 19, 2009

Borderlands lacks the charm of Fallout 3, Mass Effect, or Half-Life 2, but it does offer a crap-ton of ‘roided-out bandits, effed-up dog things, giant spider demons, and screeching pterodactyl beasts to shoot with a crap-ton of guns. And that’s really what it’s about – finding weapons and shooting things with them. You have to assign a skill point now and then, and there’s kind of a story, but those things ...

WWE SmackDown vs Raw 2010 (Review)

Oct 16, 2009

Professional wrestling gets a lot of crap thrown at it. To its detractors, it's too violent, sexist, immature and – above all – fake. And while there are grown fans who still think the predetermined results are "real," the smart fans of the sport (yes, we called it a sport) appreciate it for the amazing stunts, the colorful characters, and the rare times when two wrestlers in one ring tell such an engrossing story that you ...

Bust a Move Live! (Review)

Oct 15, 2009

Bust a Move (Puzzle Bobble in the UK) is so simple you’d have to be a monumentally cretinous imbecile to get it wrong. Stick to the formula established on day one, and it’s practically bulletproof. Still, it’s gone off the rails plenty of times – drowned by unnecessary features, or bolted on to justify a disc’s asking price. None of that on Live Arcade, though. ...

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (Review)

Oct 15, 2009

If Dreamworks are the low-rent Pixar, then surely Sony Pictures Animation, the makers of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, are a low-rent Dreamworks. They’ve crafted a charmless kid’s movie out of an obscure kid’s book, and inspired Ubisoft to belch out a game version some degrees further into the depths of low quality. ...

Lucidity (Review)

Oct 14, 2009

There are games that try to follow in the footsteps of other successful games, and there are games that try to carve their own path. It’s hard not to root for the games that try to do something new, but the danger with innovation is that what’s new isn’t always good. Often original games are admired more for their intent than their execution. ...

Magnacarta 2 (Review)

Oct 13, 2009

Take an amnesiac hero who discovers his true inner power within the first hour, a sprawling world ripped apart by warring factions, a twee supporting cast with surprisingly clear gender distinctions (in true ‘JRPG’ fashion the girls all have child’s faces surgically implanted onto adult bodies) and a cast of amateur voice actors. Enchanted Arms? Infinite Undiscovery? No, this one’s Magnacarta 2. ...

Brutal Legend (Review)

Oct 13, 2009

Metal is not dead. It can never truly die, for according to Brutal Legend, it was passed down to humankind by our creators, the Titans, and it is the weapon by which we defeated great evils (read: shitty music). Tim Schafer, the man behind Psychonauts, the game we’ve guilt-tripped you for not buying almost as much as we’ve mentioned Okami, is one funny game designer. ...

The Warriors: Street Brawl (Review)

Oct 13, 2009

In 2005, developer Rockstar Toronto expertly transformed the stale 2D beat-‘em-up into a full-blown 3D brawler with The Warriors. The long-forgotten cult flick was immediately revitalized by the superb game, setting off waves of special edition DVD releases, and a rock-solid PSP port a few years later. Fast forward to now, where the game is an easily obtainable, must-buy bargain bin treasure, and we’re baffled. ...

NBA Live 10 (Review)

Oct 12, 2009

Being a game that has received a less than enthusiastic reception in recent years, EA Sports’ NBA Live has more room for improvement than most of the company’s other sporting franchises. While it might not have the most solid gameplay foundations to build on, there probably won’t be too many people desperately upset if EA were to tear it all down and start from scratch. ...

Zombie Apocalypse (Review)

Oct 12, 2009

Talk about cashing in on the current craze. Zombie Apocalypse is double dipping on this generation’s obsession with the undead and twin-stick shooters. The result? An enjoyable top-down action game that does a decent job of keeping things interesting for a little while, but isn’t much more than a brief distraction. ...

NBA 2K10 (Review)

Oct 12, 2009

One the one hand, you’ve got EA’s shiny but occasionally flawed NBA Live; on the other, a game that doesn’t look quite so polished, but is built on a super-solid core that has consistently outplayed the opposition for years. If you’re a casual fan of the sport, then either title will probably serve equally well. ...

Section 8 (Review)

Oct 12, 2009

Armored drop troopers plummet from orbit to do battle with hostile forces on a war-torn planet in Section 8, a sci-fi first-person shooter from developer TimeGate Studios. Unfortunately, despite a few surprisingly fun gimmicks, Section 8 falls short of greatness and winds up playing like a generic cookie-cutter shooter. ...